Opinion
Student Well-Being Opinion

Student Stress Is Education’s Overlooked Crisis

Proven strategies to build focus in schools
By Terry B. Grier — December 13, 2016 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

My long trek toward retirement after 32 years as a superintendent was a rewarding one. The Houston Independent School District—the often-unwieldy, seventh-largest system in the United States, which I led for seven years—had narrowed achievement gaps and decreased the dropout rate during my tenure. In 2013, our success was honored with the Broad Prize for Urban Education. The district received a Race to the Top grant and two federal magnet school grants. It passed a $1.89 billion construction bond—the largest in Texas’ history. In spite of the accolades and achievements, including for the district’s school turnarounds and use of technology, I still had a gnawing sense of unfinished business.

Student Stress Is Education’s Overlooked Crisis: Proven strategies for managing stress help both students and adults within a school community, writes former superintendent Terry Grier.

When you regularly visit the campuses of a big, diverse city like Houston—a microcosm of our country and, to some extent, the world—you can’t help but be haunted by the faces and the stories of our youngest students and our most veteran educators. You hear from children who fall asleep to the sounds of gunfire in their neighborhoods or those who have fled a war-torn land with the same sounds ringing in their ears. You meet adolescents forced to assume adult responsibilities for earning money and caring for siblings in poverty-stricken homes, where food may be scarce and utilities spotty. You learn to recognize the strained and sagging body language of a high-performing student who is bearing the weight of a family’s lofty expectations.

You can spot burnout in the eyes of teachers who face their own relentless expectations and low resources, and sense the hopelessness in staff members who are strained to their limits.

You do your best to attack each problem—illiteracy, language barriers, high-stakes testing, dropout rates, achievement gaps, technology demands, massive mandates with limited funding, and on and on.

One afternoon, while sitting in Houston traffic and reflecting on my time leading the district, it hit me. That light-bulb moment. We had battled inequities, poverty, and adult political issues but had not tackled perhaps education’s biggest problem—a universal issue that exists across our schools, regardless of neighborhood or region: stress. What really ate at me was the fact that stress can be managed, and yet we had done little even to acknowledge the problem.

The next morning, I assembled a project team and began looking for proven strategies to help our students and teachers regain the focus they had lost. We discovered a pilot program in California and New York designed to improve health and wellness for underserved youths through simple breathing exercises, yoga-based stretching, and focus-building. What hooked us was the fact that Stanford University was evaluating this program.

In the fall of 2014, our district had the chance to incorporate these techniques into its own pilot schools and become part of two studies through University of Houston and University of San Diego. Not only did our students embrace the classes, which supplemented other physical activities and met state criteria for physical education, the teachers and staff also wanted to participate. And there was no juggling curriculum or putting additional demands on faculty, staff, and resources. We soon expanded the program to 14,000 students on 26 campuses and saw the same results as in previous research: fewer behavioral issues, students and teachers regaining focus, and a palpable shift toward a culture of care and compassion at each campus.

You can't help but be haunted by the faces and the stories of our youngest students and our most veteran educators."

But it’s the personal observations and testimonials that attest most vividly to the success of this work, hearing the pride of a child who has learned a life lesson in personal empowerment and self-control by “breathing.”

An epiphany is hard to ignore. So when it came time to retire, instead I took a deep breath, focused, and moved on to a new passion: combating personal and community stress, peer pressures, and the distractions of technology by making these simple strategies available to every school in the nation. The programs are there, the research is developing, and free resources and flexible funding are just a few keystrokes, an email, or a phone call away.

Coverage of leadership, expanded learning time, and arts learning is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.
A version of this article appeared in the December 14, 2016 edition of Education Week as A Superintendent Tackles Student Stress

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Well-Being New Florida Law Aims to Get Kids Off Social Media. Will It Work?
The law is one way the state is addressing what it sees as the negative effects of social media on children.
5 min read
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers remarks during a press conference at the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District headquarters at Walt Disney World, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., on Feb. 22, 2024. Florida will have one of the country's most restrictive social media bans for minors — if it withstands expected legal challenges — under a bill signed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 25, 2024.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers remarks during a press conference in Lake Buena Vista on Feb. 22.
Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP
Student Well-Being Opinion 4 Steps Students Can Take to Help Make Tough Decisions
When students feel stuck, they can harness the power of the nonconscious mind to help them move forward.
Kennon Sheldon
2 min read
Images shows a stylized artistic landscape with soothing colors.
Getty
Student Well-Being From Our Research Center Students Think Social Media Is Fine, But Teachers See a Mental Health Minefield
It's important for adults to recognize and understand teens’ perspectives in order to teach healthy social media habits.
8 min read
Custom illustration showing a young female student floating above a cell phone while in a protective bubble that looks like a split happy and sad emoji. Digital and techie textures applied to the background.
Taylor Callery for Education Week
Student Well-Being Q&A 'It Terrifies Me': Clinical Psychologist on Tech Overuse in the Age of AI
Lisa Strohman has dedicated her career to connecting the dots between tech overuse/misuse and mental health problems.
4 min read
Custom illustration showing a young female student wearing a book bag and standing inside a protective bubble that looks like a split happy and sad emoji.
Taylor Callery for Education Week